Pricksongs & Descants

by Robert Coover

  15...

  They plunge, their damp bodies fused, pounding furiously, in terror, in joy, the impact is

  I, Martin, proclaim against all dooms the in destructible seed

  Martin does not take the self-service elevator to the fourteenth floor, as is his custom, but, reflecting upon it for once and out of a strange premonition, determines instead to walk the four teen flights. Halfway up, he hears the elevator hurtle by him and then the splintering crash from below. He hesitates, poised on the stair. Inscrutable is the word he finally settles upon. He pronounces it aloud, smiles faintly, sadly, somewhat wearily, then continues his tedious climb, pausing from time to time to stare back down die stairs behind him.

  ROMANCE OF THE THIN MAN AND THE FAT LADY

  Now, many stories have been told, songs sung, about the Thin Man and the Fat Lady. Not only is there something comic in the coupling, but the tall erect and bony stature of the Man and the cloven mass of roseate flesh that is the Lady are in themselves metaphors too apparent to be missed. To be sure of it, one need only try to imagine a Thin Lady paired with a Fat Man. It is not ludi crous, it is unpleasant No, the much recounted mating of the Thin Man with the Fat Lady is a circus legend full of truth. In fact, it is hardly more or less than the ultimate image of all our common everyday romances, which are also, let us confess, somehow comic. We are all Thin Men. You are all Fat Ladies.

  But such simplicities are elusive; our metaphors turn on us, show us backsides human and complex. For observe them now: the Thin Man slumps soup-eyed and stoop-shouldered, seeming not thin so much as ill, and die Fat Lady in her stall sags immobile and turned blackly into herself. A passerby playfully punches his thumb into her thigh, an innocent commonplace event, and she spits in his eye.

  “Hey, lady!”

  “Right in his eye! I saw her!”

  “What kinda circus is this, anyway?”

  “She’s probably not fat, just wearing a balloon suit!”

  “Come, darling, don’t get too close to the Fat Lady, something’s wrong with her.” .

  Children cry, and lovers, strangely disturbed, turn quickly away from them, seeking out the monkey cage. Whoo! the Image of all our Romances indeed!

  Yet perhaps—why yes! surely!—the signs are unmistakable; a third party has intruded.

  Madame Cobra the Snakecharmer?

  The Incredible Man with the Double Joints?

  The Missing Link?

  No, our triangle is of a more sinister genius. Our villain is the Ringmaster.

  “We thought he’d understand. We were open about it The circus life is a good life, but it’s a tough one, too. A man’s gotta be a man.”

  “Get of? that diet, Fat Lady, says he. The pig. Okay, okay, I say. But he doesn’t believe me. He moves in on us! Can you imagine?”

  “I was in the Strong Man’s tent. I had twenty-five pounds up in the air, which for a Thin Man ain’t bad. I’m pretty proud of it and when he comes in I say: Hey! look at that muscle! I’ll show you muscle, says he, and kicks my poor ass all over that tent He shouldn’t do that. I got a very fragile spine.”

  “Tape measure, calory charts, scales, everything. Don’t take his beady eyes off us day or night I ain’t allowed to sweat, my Man can’t exert hisself. What’re we supposed to do?”

  “Like animals, that’s how he treats us. Livestock. Checks her teeth, hefts her udders, slaps her on the bare nates when she’s on the scales. No heart at all. She’s crying, but does he care? Eat! he says. Eat! You gotta let a woman be a woman, I believe that.”

  It comes to this, then: that not even Ultimate Heroes are free from fashion. The Thin Man has wished to develop muscles, further to excite his Fat Lady—

  “Builds stamina, too. Helps your wind.”

  And the Lady has attempted to reduce to be more appealing to her Man—

  “And I had my heart to think about. You understand.”

  Now, were the Ringmaster a philosopher, he might have avoided the catastrophe—for, as in all true romances, and surely in the Truest, there is a catastrophe. He might have been able to convince the couple with a merest syllogism of the absurdity— indeed the very contradiction!—of their respective wishes. But, far from being a philosopher, he indulges in the basest of trades (and is thus the best of villains!): he is a trafficker, a businessman, a financier, a Keeper of the Holier Books.

  “Philosophy! You want philosophy? I’ll give you philosophy! Okay, okay, so they’re romantic symbols, I understand that, I’m not stupid, but what they symbolize, buddy, ain’t Beauty. It’s like that old fraud Merlin the Prestidigitator said when he came to try and softsoap me: Who can blame them if they see outside themselves symbols of their own? There’s something in all of us, Mr. Ring master, he says, that rebels against extremes. Hell, I can follow that. And being a symbol: who wants it anyway? Narcissism, that’s all it is. But what the fuck else do you think a circus is all about? Philosophy! Philosophy my ass! And the same goes for human nature! Want me to wreck my goddamn business? Listen! If the Fat Lady were not the fattest and the Thin Man the thinnest in the world— we’re talking first principles now, buster—no one would pay to see them. Where are all your goddamn noble abstractions when the circus collapses and we’re all of us out on the streets? Adaptation, boys and girls! Expediency! And to hell with nature!”

  Things do not work out as well, however, as the Ringmaster has anticipated. The Fat Lady in her gloom loses her appetite and begins to waste away. The Thin Man stops eating altogether and must be held in an upright position all day by props; And even the Ringmaster, normally of such stable even if unpleasant temper, grows inexplicably fidgety in the long fumbling nights alongside the couple’s troubled bed.

  “She can’t sleep, the poor dear. Whimpering all night long. I try to soothe her best I can, but my hands, so to speak, are tied.”

  ‘“One squeak of the bedsprings and on come the lights!”

  “The man’s a nut!”

  “He looks down at my Man and says: That’s one muscle too many! And throws cold water on it—”

  “All night in a cold wet bed!” At last, the Ringmaster negotiates a highly favorable contract of exchange with a rival circus, by which he is to acquire an Ambassador from Mars and a small sum of money for the waning Fat Lady. Another couple weeks, he thinks, and she would have been worth less. Hoo hee! a miraculous deal, a work of genius! Giggling softly (and no doubt meanly) to himself, he drops off that night into a comfortable slumber, the first in weeks, the bed beside him heaving fretfully the while with the parting anguish of the distraught lovers.

  “It wasn’t murder, it was a revolution.”

  “A revolution of love!”

  As one, the entire complement of die circus arises at midnight—

  “Now!”

  “Freedom!”

  “Equality!”

  “Clobber the fuckin lech!”

  —summarily executes and inters the Ringmaster alongside the deserted country road (castrating him symbolically in the process—circus people are born to symbology!), and installs the Fat Lady and die Thin Man as Representatives of the Common Proprietorship.

  “We were all agreed. The Thin Man and the Fat Lady, in fact, were the last to know.”

  “An Ambassador from Mars indeed! Did he think we had no pride?”

  So joy reigns in the circus for weeks. Every performance concludes with a party. The two lovers’ happiness seems to radiate magically, attracting new masses of spectators, all of which augments, in turn, their happiness. It is indeed a paradise. The Thin Man exercises without compunction and quickly reaps a sturdy little pair of biceps. The Fat Lady, all aglow, switches calorie charts with the Thin Man, and within a week loses one of her several chins. Everyone, including the Thin Man, remarks on her beauty. Love is the word of the day. Circus people are basically good people. Their hatred for their former Ringmaster subsides, the souvenir taken from him is fed to the lions, and he is soon forgotten altogether. In a new day, there is n
o place for old resentments.

  “I mean, you go along for years, see, thinking you got a Ring master on accounta you gotta have one. Ever seen a circus without a Ringmaster? No. Well, that just goes to show how history can fake you out!”

  It was beautiful! All of it just happening! Acts coming on spontaneously, here, there, it was wild and exciting and unpredictable!”

  “Suddenly it hits you, see. All your life you been looking at circuses and you say, that’s how circuses are. But what if they ain’t? What if that’s all a goddamn myth propagated by Ringmasters? You dig? What if it’s all open-ended, and we can, if we want to, live by love?”

  “We even started enjoying each other’s acts!”

  “I rode the elephant once!”

  “Who says clowns gotta take pratfalls alia time? I learned to play in the band and train a bear and ride a horse through a fiery hoop!” But, just when the picture is pinkest, bad news: it becomes all too apparent that fewer people are visiting the stalls of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady, and those that do pass through, do so hastily and with little interest. “Okay, so they’re happy, so they’re in love. So what? You see one lover, you seen ‘em all.”

  At first, everyone stubbornly disregards the signs. The parties go on, the songs and the celebrations. The Thin Man lifts weights as always, and the Fat Lady diets. Their glad hearts, though gnawed at a bit by apprehension, remain kindled by love and joy. One could almost say it was the romantic legend come true. But finally they can no longer ignore the black-and-white truth of the circus ledger, now in their care. Somewhere, apparently, there is a fatter lady and a thinner man. Their new world threatens to crumble.

  “We didn’t wanna hurt their feelings, you know. We kidded them a little, hoping they’d take the hint.”

  “Why couldn’t they just love each other for themselves?”

  “For the good of the whole circus, we said.”

  In their van one night, doubt having doused for the moment the flame of passion, they agree: the Fat Lady will restore her castoff corpulence, the Thin Man will return his set of barbells to the Strong Man. They re-exchange calorie charts. They begin in earnest to win back their public, found to be an integrant of their attachment, after all.

  It is not easy. Worried by business reverses, the Fat Lady must work doubly hard to lay on each pound. And the Thin Man discovers that his little knots of muscle tend to sag instead of disappear. But they are driven by the most serious determination. The eyes of die circus are upon them. Momentary reverses only steel them more to the task.

  “Chocolates! For me? It’s been so long!”

  “With love.”

  “But now that you’ve seen me like this, will you truly love me when I’m fat again ?”

  “To be honest, dear, I ain’t sure I can even tell the difference.” The worst part of the day for the Fat Lady comes when she steps upon the scales. Disgusted by her fat, she is disgusted she has added so little of it The Thin Man dutifully records her weight each day, and his presence comes to irritate her. He clucks his tongue when she fails to increase and sighs wistfully when she succeeds. She would cry but is afraid of the loss of anything, even tears. She refuses to submit to any activity which might make her perspire, and even demands that she be lifted in and out of the van each day.

  The Thin Man steps daily before a full-length mirror. Disgusted by his thinness, he is disgusted that he still wears those little pouches under his skin. He wishes to be mere bone. Hilarious frightening unfleshed bone. The Fat Lady nags and pinches the little lumps that were once his muscles. He wonders if he has come to hate her.

  “Hold up your arm there, loverboy, lemme feel that flab—hey 1 how cute! just like a little oyster!”

  “Yeah? And so what?”

  “So: oysters are a luxury, skinhead. People may pay to eat ‘em, but they won’t pay just to look!”

  The Fat Lady, pointing out the Thin Man’s bagginess, doubts he has been firm in his resolution, and snoops about for hidden food. The Man, grimly checking the Lady on the scales each day, begins to suspect her of burning off calories behind his back. They sneak into each other’s stalls during the day, spy on one another at mealtimes, wrangle bitterly over the business books at night in their van. If one day the Fat Lady takes in a single dime more than the Thin Man, he must account for his obvious inconstancy of will. If a child carried past the Fat Lady’s stall fails to laugh and point at her, the Thin Man uses it as proof of her deceptions. Of what use is she to the circus if not even a child is titillated? What is worse than a baggy Thin Man who can’t make a dime?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t build these goddamn biceps overnight, they don’t shrink overnight neither. You can’t exercise backwards, I tell her. You just go limp and hope for the best But I do that and she just laughs at me. I think she’s got her eye on Daredevil Dick.”

  “Think of my nerves, I tell him. If they ain’t fat nerves, he says,

  I got no use for them. All day, he’s stuffing me. Even wants to add intravenous feedings. One day he brings home this dumbbell. He’s got a mean glint in his eye—Nothing doing, I say. But it gives him this idea. Maybe you oughta get pregnant, he says. That’d work for nine months, I say, but then what? And he gives me this strange look.”

  The situation deteriorates rapidly. The Thin Man becomes sour and morose, his shoulders stooped, head sunk in dark thoughts. The Fat Lady, immobile and glum, goes so far as to belch obscenely when a passerby remarks that she is really not so fat after all. They quarrel without cease, and their gloom spreads like wet sawdust through the whole circus. Gate receipts diminish and even the peanut sales drop off.

  And then one night, the Thin Man moves abruptly to the old Ringmaster’s van, something of a sacrifice on his part, since in the interim it has been used by a pair of camels. The Fat Lady bellows after him that she is glad to see him go (it’s not true about Daredevil Dick, though: who could think about love in times like these?), as he stamps peevishly out of her van, the business books smuggled under his shirt He renegotiates the old deal with the rival circus, and before anyone realizes what has happened, they have an Ambassador from Mars in their midst and the Fat Lady is gone. There are some unspecific rumbles of discontent, but since no one wishes to be sold to die rival circus, known to be on its last legs and infamous for its corrupt and tyrannical Ringmaster, these rumbles are held within discreet limits.

  “Well, it was a crisis, after all. He did what he had to do. You had to think about the competition. They were all out to get us. It was the best thing for everybody.”

  “She was my best friend. Everyone loved her. But no one seemed to care. I was alone. What could I say?”

  “You get used to everything in this life.”

  The Thin Man, in power, gains strength. He squares his shoulders and sets about getting the circus back on its feet He is ruthless with himself as he has learned to be ruthless with others.

  The harder he works, the more rigorously he fasts. He will be thin, and damn the world! And even the unhappy Fat Lady, leagues distant, surrenders wearily to her fate and, doing so, finds it easy enough to expand once again.

  But wait! See what we have come to! The Fat Lady separated from her inseparable Thin Man! The solution, for all the Thin Man’s admirable will, cannot but fail. It is a circus without pleasure. What are three rings of determination? These are dismal shadowy, tents and who can wander through their yawning flaps without a taste of dread? No, no, it is worse even than the mythological Thin Lady coupled with a Fat Man! Our metaphor, with time, has come unhinged! A rescue is called for!

  Let us suppose, then, that the Thin Man is suddenly deposed, never mind why or how.

  Taking everything for himself.”

  “Even started growing a moustache, bought himself a whip!”

  “We had a meeting and—”